EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI EIVEE. 401 



At this time the Ootswold was the most popular and most widely 

 extended English breed of sheep in Kew York and in the Union. The 

 pure-bred genuine Leicester of twenty years past were not to be had. 

 The so-called Leicesters of 1876 were nearly as large as the Ootswolds 

 and in no respect superior. A few were imported but were not appre- 

 ciated. They were too small and delicate to suit the popular taste, 

 though they made excellent crosses with the Merino. The Southdown, 

 though acknowledged as the best mutton sheep of the English breeds, 

 was also too small. The Lincolnshire had been tried and discarded as 

 unfitted to the climate and method of our agriculture. There was now 

 a demand for a different type of sheep, a popiilar need for a sheep 

 which would produce a large carcass of mutton along with a fleece of 

 wool which would command as high a price per pound as any of the 

 pure breeds. The Southdown, the Ootswold, the Leicester were less 

 profitable sheep for the farmer than the Oxfordshire, the Hampshire, 

 and the Shropshire, which had been introduced to some extent. But 

 the trouble was that all the English sheep deteriorated and the farmer 

 could not keep a pure-bred flock up to the standard. A sheep was 

 wanted larger than the Southdown, but of equal quaUty for mutton, 

 and with a heavier fleece and a fine one. Such a sheep, it was thought, 

 could be raised from the material at hand, the best foundation for 

 which could be found in the grades of English Downs — the South- 

 downs, the Hampshire, and the Shropshire — short, with black or 

 smutty faces and hardy constitutions, with medium wool packed close 

 and impenetrable to rain or snow. It did not pay to import and keep 

 pure breeds to produce mutton at 6 to 8 cents a pound. This business 

 was carried on to some extent, whereby the ordinaryflocks were crossed 

 by imported English sheep, but what was wanted was something bet- 

 ter even than English sheep, which it was necessary to keep up by 

 constant importations; it was needed to establish an American breed 

 or breeds of sheep, as we did the Merino, and to stop importing with a 

 view to maintain the standard of the English breeds. Such was the 

 plaint of the agricultural papers in 1875 and 1876, but no valuable 

 practical results followed. 



An eftbrt in the direction of a new sheep may be noted. In 1868 Wil- 

 liam Orozier, of Beacon farm, near Northport, Long Island, produced a 

 cross between an imported Southdown ewe and the Ootswold ram King- 

 ston, imported that year. This ram was a choice animal and had been 

 the winner of many prizes in England, Oanada, and the United States. 

 The ewe was also froln selected and choice stock. The produce of this 

 ram and ewe bred in-and-in, the result being a sheep of good constitu- 

 tion, with a heavy- fleece of combing wool, much superior in quality to, 

 and of equal weight with, that of the pure Ootswold, and much closer 

 and denser upon the sheep's back, while the carcass of mutton was as 

 good as and one-half larger than that of the pure Southdown. This 

 description and an engraving of the sheep appeared in the American 

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